


Five Times Sherlock Holmes Fell (And The One Time It Was John Watson)

by iamjacksblindrage



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Drug Addiction, M/M, Songfic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-12-30
Updated: 2014-04-02
Packaged: 2018-01-06 19:28:21
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 5
Words: 2,310
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1110644
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/iamjacksblindrage/pseuds/iamjacksblindrage
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look into the life of Sherlock Holmes and his constant falling.  Based on Florence + The Machine's 'Falling'</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

_I’ve fall out of favor and I’ve fallen from grace_

Sherlock had only been 16 years old when his parents kicked him out.  Siger and Natalia Holmes didn’t quite approve of his life choices and told him that they never wanted him to show his face around their house ever again.  Apparently, a mild cocaine habit and being kicked out of university for burning down a lab were frowned upon, and punishable by being disowned.

                His life was a downward spiral after that, as he moved from dumpy flat to dumpy flat, drowning in his addiction.  Mycroft was a surprising constant, though, always the one who picked him back up after overdoses, the one who got him into a new flat after he’d been kicked out of the last.  Mycroft was the only one whose favor he hadn’t lost when he was kicked out of the Holmes family, and all it did was make damn sure that he resented Mycroft’s very existence.

                Sherlock dropped to his very lowest the summer after he turned 20.  He’d managed to fly under Mycroft’s ever growing gaze, hiding deep in alleys and crack dens, constantly strung out.  He had found that he couldn’t manage more than a few hours without a hit anymore, so they were the perfect hiding places for an addict like him.

                Lestrade had been the one to find him when he’d taken it too far.  The man had been a lot younger, his hair black as pitch, the lines on his face a lot fewer.  He’d just been a police constable then, freshly married with a child on the way.  And, in those days, he was a part of the drugs squad.

                That time, Sherlock had been stretched out, semi-conscious, on the floor of someone’s dingy basement flat.  Everything was swimming, so he had shut his eyes, unable to focus on any one thing.  Which was perfectly fine with him, it was the reason he used.  He was vaguely aware of the door bursting open, but couldn’t quite respond.  Everyone around him started to get up and make their attempts to flee, but Sherlock wouldn’t-couldn’t-move from his spot on the floor.

                A man with smoker’s breath and soft hands knelt down next to him and took his pulse and tried to get him to respond.  When Sherlock did nothing more than groan at him, he yelled for an ambulance.  At some point, curiosity got the better of him, and he opened his eyes to inspect the man at his side.

                “You’re a smoker, pack a day, but you’re making the attempt to quite because your wife is pregnant with your first child,” he started, his voice raspy and cracking.  “Police constable, but what you really want is to be a detective.  You’re a bit of a punk, a rebel without a cause in your teen years.”

                “How in the hell do you know all that?”

                You scoff and close your eyes to him.

                “I don’t know, I see.”

                The young police constable had ridden with Sherlock in the ambulance, and came to see him every day while he was in hospital.  He had been the one to convince Sherlock to check into rehab, on the promises of letting him onto crime scenes once had become a detective.


	2. Chapter 2

_Fallen out of trees and I’ve fallen on my face_

The first year out of rehab was the worst.  With Lestrade still working his way up the ranks, he didn’t have much to do on a day to day basis.  Mostly, he ended up smoking more cigarettes than necessary and trying to avoid the itch of cravings. 

He’d met Molly Hooper during this first year, and with a little flattery and a smidge of charm, had worked his way into the morgue at St. Bartholomew’s Hospital to do experiments.  There was specific experiment we was doing on leaves for various trees around London, that had required him to climb up said trees.  He hadn’t thought anything of it, because as a child, he had climbed the trees on the Holmes estate more times than he could count.

What he hadn’t taken into account is that he had shot up nearly a foot and a half since he had last climbed a tree.  He couldn’t quite figure out where to place his feet as he scrambled for purchase in an old oak tree.  Somehow, had made it about half way up the large tree and had his arms full with bags of leaves and started to make his attempt at climbing back down.

Only to, yet again, forget the length of his limbs, miss a branch about 15 feet off the ground, and come crashing down face-first in the grass.  It took him nearly 20 minutes to haul himself up off the ground and brush himself off.  A quick check over showed no serious injury, other than his broken and bleeding nose.  It was starting to stain his favorite shirt, he noticed with a bit of irritation, and he headed back in the direction of the main road to catch a cab to St. Bart’s. 

After letting a mildly competent doctor set his nose and accepted an ice pack to keep the swelling in his face down, Sherlock headed down to the labs by the morgue to set to work on what he could do with his already planned experiment.

Molly was in the lab when he entered, and she gasped when she caught sight of his face.

“Are you alright?”  She started fluttering over him and, in his irritation, snapped at her.  She skittered away, fear and worry written all over her face.

The next day was a Friday, the day Sherlock always met up with Sergeant Lestrade discuss cases and Sherlock’s progress with his recovery.  Sherlock met the older man in a small, fairly empty café on Baker Street at 6 pm, like always, to find the man sat in their usual table in the back.  He strode through the café towards Lestrade, his coat billowing around him.  Lestrade looked up from the file he was looking at and immediately broke into laughter.  Sherlock scowled at him and sat down.

“What on earth do you find so humorous?”

“Have you seen your face, mate?” Lestrade gasped out between laughs, and Sherlock frowned further, before standing up to look in the mirror on one wall of the café.

The young man was shocked to find that, under the bandage holding his nose in place, his face had bruised magnificently.  Both his eyes were black and his face was covered in small scrapes and bruises from branches that had hit his face.


	3. Chapter 3

_Fallen out of taxis, out of windows, too_

After John had moved in with Sherlock, the detective had found he quite liked having a doctor around at his disposal.  Because, despite being a fairly graceful man, regardless of his height, Sherlock had a tendency to a bit clumsy.  John was constantly having to patch the younger man up after cases because he had hurt himself.

                There was one time, while chasing down a suspect, Sherlock had jumped out of a still moving taxi, tripped over the curb, falling right on his face.  Then he had gotten right back up and started sprinting down the street after the young man.  It wasn’t until they had gotten back to 221B hours later, the suspect apprehended and the case closed, that Sherlock had even mentioned any pain.  With one finger splinted and another being iced from a bad jam, as well as a goose-egg on his forehead that was being iced as well, Sherlock had curled up on the couch, sulking.  It’d be a few weeks before he could play his violin or type properly.  His gloves didn’t fit over the splint.  Weathering his strops while his finger healed tested John’s patience in a way it had never been tested before. 

                The broken finger had been nothing compared to the broken ribs, though, about 5 months later.  The pair had been out on a case, nothing unusual, until Sherlock had skidded over the side of a fire escape after throwing himself out of a window in the flat of the suspect when said suspect returned home.  John had managed to get out the window and down one level on the fire escape before the suspect saw him, but Sherlock hadn’t moved quite fast enough and flung himself out the open window and promptly went over the edge of the fire escape.  He had lucked out, though, and manage to grab onto the edge of the iron, swinging down onto the next level, where John was waiting.  The fall was still nasty, and as soon as they had gotten down to ground level, Sherlock had passed out and John had to call an ambulance.

                The diagnosis had been one dislocated shoulder, one sprained wrist, three broken ribs and a mild concussion.  The prognosis had been good, but Sherlock had to be keep for observation overnight because of his concussion and wouldn’t be allowed to go out in the field for a while.  The next 6 weeks while his ribs healed were probably the worst out of the entire time the pair had lived together.  John has to exercise his utmost patience with the other man or risk strangling him. 

                John had been rewarded at the end with a clean flat, including a thoroughly scrubbed fridge that was devoid of human body parts.


	4. Chapter 4

_Fell in your opinion when I fell in love with you_

                Sherlock Holmes had starting falling in love with John Watson the moment he laid eyes on him at Bart’s.  The biggest problem about this was the Sherlock didn’t realize he was falling for the compact army doctor until he hit the ground.

                He’d realized it in its entirety when John had been kidnapped by Moriarty.  The sight of John standing there next to that pool, covered in Semtex made Sherlock come to the conclusion that John was more important than anything else in his entire life.  He lived for John Watson.

                The moment that Moriarty and the snipers had cleared out of the swimming pool, Sherlock had surged forward and pulled John into his grasp.

                “Sherlock, wha-“

                Sherlock crashed his lips against John’s, sliding a hand into the short hairs at the nape of his neck, pulling him ever closer.  It took a few seconds, but eventually, John responded in kind, completely ravaging Sherlock’s mouth.

                “John,” he gasps against John’s mouth, eyes shut, forehead resting against John’s. 

                “I know,” John murmurs, gripping Sherlock’s arms just above the elbow.

                “I love you,” Sherlock sighed.  “I love you terribly and I’ve only just realized it and I don’t know how I could be so stupid!”

                “Hey,” John murmurs, stroking Sherlock’s back, “it’s alright, calm down.  I love you, too.”

                It’s all Sherlock can do to stay on his feet.

                Once they finally get home, in the early hours of the morning, all the pair can do is fall into Sherlock’s bed together, still fully dressed.  Sherlock curls in around John, holding them tight together, for fear of losing his blogger.


	5. Chapter 5

_Sometimes I wish for falling, wish for the release, wish for falling through the air to give me some relief, because falling’s not the problem, when I’m falling I’m at peace, it’s only when I hit the ground, it causes all the grief_

                Throwing himself off St. Bart’s Hospital was oddly calming.  In the short time between when he let himself fall and when he hit the airbag waiting for him on the pavement, Sherlock was at peace.  The rush of adrenaline and the surprisingly cool June air whipping around him was perfect.  For the first time since he got clean 10 years previously, Sherlock’s mind was silent.  No excess data, no distractions, not a single solitary thought strayed across his mind.

                And then he hit the airbag.

                He had to move, and move quickly, so John wouldn’t know.  As his body raced to complete the task of convincing John he was dead, his mind raced at a comparable speed.  This was going to tear John apart, he couldn’t help but fixate on how much grief he was going to cause John.  His blogger, his best and only friend, the love of his life.  And he was about to leave that man behind for god knows how long just to try and keep him safe.

                He had just settled onto the pavement, covered in blood-real blood, the smell was unbearably strong-when John finally made it to his side.  He could hear the distress in the man’s voice, the telltale shakiness and cracking that meant he was on the verge of tears.  Sherlock focused hard on not breathing noticeably and not blinking, faking dead.  A pair of men from the homeless network lifted him onto a stretcher and pulled him into the hospital as fast as they could, but even over the clattering of the wheels on the paving stones, he could hear John’s heavy breathing and pleas.

                The moment he know he was out of sight and earshot of John, he heaved in a huge, shuddering breath, letting tears stream down his face.  Molly greeted him at the morgue, solemn and sympathetic.  It’s with steady, gentle hands that she takes his clothes for evidence storage and cleans the blood off of his face and out of his hair.  She gives him the clothes he’d stored there-some jeans, a t-shirt, a hoodie, some trainers-and changes in a hurry.  One of Mycroft’s cars would be waiting for him and he had to get moving.  He left Molly with a parting embrace and headed out of the building.

                With the heavy weight of John’s grief resting on his shoulders, Sherlock set out into the unknown, into the abyss that would be Moriarty’s criminal web, and didn’t look back.


End file.
